GOATWHORE RINGS IN A BLACK NEW YEAR

Photo Credit, Dirt Junior

Goatwhore played a small but intimate show on an offdate from their tour with High on FIre and Corrosion of Conformity at Los Globos in Silverlake just before the holiday break.Taking the stage well after midnight to a modest but zealous crowd, Goatwhore launched right into their set with ‘Collapse in Eternal Worth’.

The band did not come up for air until after throuroughly brutalising us with ‘When Steel and Bone Meet’ and ‘Parasitic Sciptures of the Sacred World,’ all tracks off the band’s latest offering, Blood for the Master, which came out early in 2012 on Metalblade Records. In fact a good half of the set was off the new album with ‘Alchemy of the Black Sun Cult’ off 2006’s A Haunting Curse, Sky Inferno, which lead vocalist Ben dedicated to everyone in the room, ‘Carving out the Eyes of God’s’, ‘To Mourn and Forever Wander Through Forgotten Doorways’, and the last song of the night ‘Apocalyptic Havoc’ being the exceptions to the rule.

The pit didn’t get violent until the second half of the set but it was clear that everyone who was there was here to witness the evil, shredding, gauntlet-wearing, blackened, death metal goodness of NOLA’s finest.

Goatwhore had several bands supporting them, the standout act of which was definitely Crowned by Fire, an unsigned five-piece out of Santa Clarita who have been together for around seven years. Putting on an energetic performance, their guitarist Justin Manning stole the show with an epic solo in one of their very first songs of the set, and the band’s good old fashioned rock ‘n roll sound with its solid heavy influences and some groove thrown into the mix was a definite hit that made the crowd move.

Local act Vesterian played an eerie, ethereal set of atmospheric black metal for us by the light of candelabra and Lo-Pan, a stoner rock band from Ohio who are also on tour with Goatwhore, High on Fire and Corrosion of Conformity got up and did their thing making it a night of multi-genre metal and rock ‘n roll. The venue was actually a pretty good choice for the size of the show giving it that intimate feel that gets lost in much larger clubs and concert halls. It was definitely a show no die-hard Goatwhore fan would have wanted to miss!